1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image management system in which an image output apparatus which outputs an image data to various types of media and a server are connected via a communication network, the image output apparatus, and a computer readable medium.
2. Description of Related Art
In recent years, improvement of security is also emphasized in an image output apparatus such as a copier, a printer, an MFP (Multi Function Peripheral; complex machine) and the like from a viewpoint of information management and the like of companies, and techniques for security enhancement are being developed. As an example, there is known a technique of storing evidences of illegalities without deleting the image data when certain characteristics such as the characteristics of paper money and securities are included in the image data which is read by an image reading unit (see JP2004-112517A, hereinafter, referred to as Patent Document 1).
Further, there is known a technique of assuring highly reliable photographed image which is not altered by managing the image in the same condition as the condition when the image was photographed through sequentially transmitting the image data obtained by the photographing to the server of an image storage center for every photographing by a digital camera (see JP2003-158705A, hereinafter, referred to as Patent Document 2).
However, in case where the image output apparatus is used by unspecified number of people such as in a company and the like, there is a possibility that the image output apparatus may be used illegally, for example, the documents which include confidential information are copied by an unauthorized user and the documents are printed for personal use. Therefore, there is a need to regulate and manage the illegalities of users by recording the usage history of the image output apparatus.
In the technique of Patent Document 1 described above, the illegalities can be regulated by determining whether certain characteristics are included in the image data or not. However, it is technically difficult to determine whether the content of the document includes a highly confidential document within the company or not, or whether the content of the document is the document for a personal user or not from the image data. Therefore, a method of simply storing all of the image data which are output in a storage device can be easily realized.
However, when there are a plurality of image output apparatuses, the usage history needs to be managed by referring to the storage devices of each image output apparatus. Thus, the operation of an operator becomes complicated. Further, it is considered that, by applying the technique of Patent Document 2, the image data which is output by the image output apparatus is sequentially transferred to the server and then, unified management of the image data is carried out by the server. However, the sequential transfer of the image data to the external server for every image output may cause the decrease of the processing rate of the image output. Thus, there is a problem that the overloaded condition occurs continuously.